


The Physicist and the Assassin

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Time, M/M, Power Dynamics, Protectiveness, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't going to top anyone's list of good ideas, but since that tended to happen fairly frequently--them being stuck with really lousy choices--nobody wasted too much time on arguing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn't going to top anyone's list of good ideas, but since that tended to happen fairly frequently--them being stuck with really lousy choices--nobody wasted too much time on arguing. All the available intel pointed to the fact that the last five “incidents” involving nuclear components could be linked back to a single man, a former theoretical physicist who’d quietly dropped out sight just as several of his less, er, mainstream views concerning the not-so-theoretical testing of nuclear material in populated areas came to the public’s attention. 

“He’s getting more confident,” Fury said. “Everything has been going his way and he’s coming out of his bunker for the first time in years to attend this conference.” That part was fine. The not-so-fine part started when the only person SHIELD could get on the inside on the short notice they had turned out to be Bruce. It made sense: it was a conference on sub-atomic particle physics and Bruce definitely had the credentials, but… Fury was polite about it, telling Bruce he wouldn't like it even if the Other Guy hadn't been a factor, but the fact remained that the Other Guy was always there.

"Sending civilians in always makes his eye twitch," Clint offered in the elevator on the way back down from Fury's office. “And you know, that just gives him a migraine.” He gave a startlingly good impression of Fury scowling and rubbing at his temples. Natasha sighed and elbowed him in the side, but Clint looked fairly unrepentant and Bruce had to admit that it had broken the tension between the three of them. Given that they were the team, with Agent Hill running the show from the command center, Bruce also had to admit that the less tension there was between them, the better.

Plus, it was kind of funny. Bruce didn't tell Natasha that, though.

All three agents were all incredibly professional and had obviously done this more than once, but to Bruce’s surprise, it was Clint doing most of the talking, walking Bruce through the different levels of Tony’s latest-and-greatest comm system (the team generally didn’t bother with fitting Bruce for anything when they were going into a situation as the Other Guy tended to take a dim view of unseen people talking to him) and getting him set with a tracking device (again, the Other Guy wasn’t really good with delicate equipment.) Agent Hill ran through the high-level plan, and Natasha was very straightforward about how she and Bruce were going to present themselves as a couple, but once more, it was Clint who answered most of Bruce’s what-ifs and had fall-back plans for the fall-back plans.

“And if all that fails, I’ll still think of something,” Clint added at the end.

“It’s what he does,” Natasha said. “He sits up in his little nest and thinks of every possible thing that could go wrong.”

“Hey,” Clint said. “I think of a couple of impossible ones, too, and you know damn well more than one of them has happened. Sometimes at the same time.” 

“Budapest,” Natasha said to Bruce, her tone dry. 

“Do not say that word,” Agent Hill said with a pained look.

“I rest my case,” Clint answered. He turned to Bruce and added, “Don’t worry, Doc; we’ve got you covered. It’s a conference. Nat can carry an arsenal in an evening gown--wait ‘til you see what she can carry under resort casual.”

“I thought this was just information-gathering,” Bruce said as he was herded out the door.

“You know what they say, Doc,” Clint said with a smirk. Bruce counted four knives that he showed Bruce and then tucked away so quickly Bruce doubted he'd actually seen them. “Talk softly and carry a big-- machete.” Clint’s expression turned positively gleeful as he tossed a knife big enough to be termed exactly that to Natasha, who somehow made it disappear before Bruce really even registered that she’d caught it. She smiled demurely and turned to go. “And that is why she is forever my favorite,” Clint said, clutching his heart dramatically. 

“Yes,” Agent Hill said to Bruce. “He’s going to be like this the entire mission.”

“But he won’t miss,” Natasha said over her shoulder, and Bruce found that he was more than okay with the trade-off.

* * *

The conference was being held in Geneva; the hotel looked out over the lake and was more of a spa than a venue where one might expect to find a gathering of particle physicists. Most of the scientists there, Bruce discovered, had come more for the scenery than the science. Given the circumstances of his own attendance, Bruce could hardly blame them. Amid the somewhat decadent spa offerings, though, the organizers _were_ offering a day trip to CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. Lunch in the cafeteria optional. Bruce stood in front of the registration table just long enough to telegraph his interest.

“I’d take a pass on it, Doc,” Clint murmured in his ear, the acoustics of Tony’s comm system living up to every claim. Clint sounded like he was right next to Bruce rather than 500 meters away and in a different building, watching Bruce through a high-powered targeting scope. “You know Stark has better contacts, plus he just loves to bring that chef of his along.” Bruce heard what Clint wasn’t saying--they didn’t have any intel on CERN and Clint didn’t like not knowing anything about where the people on his mission might be going--so he politely declined. It was still a disappointment, though; and he marveled a little at how much more a part of the world he’d allowed himself to become in this last year, since Natasha had lured him to a house on the outskirts of the Calcutta. “Buck up, Doc,” Clint added. “Sitwell owes me one--I swear we’ll make it happen. And if I can’t, Tasha can needle Stark into setting up a real VIP trip to make up for missing this go-round. Seriously, it’ll make her week to have something to harass him about.”

“Thank you, Agent Barton,” Hill said. She had a remarkable knack for translating her glare into her voice, Bruce thought. “Could we have a little less chatter?”

Clint was quiet after that. Bruce deliberately didn’t look up and try to pinpoint his location, but he could still feel Clint’s eyes on him. If you’d asked him before this assignment, Bruce would have said it’d make his skin crawl to know he was under constant surveillance. Now that it was happening, though, he wasn’t bothered by it. He thought that had a lot to do with who was doing the watching.

* * *

There was a reception in the Grand Ballroom the first night, to open the conference. Black tie optional. Bruce had snorted at the thought of a dinner jacket; Agent Hill hadn’t pressed the issue, just made sure he was fine with a suit and somehow made one appear in the thirty-six hours they’d had before they had to be in position. In his suite, Bruce dressed quickly, barely paying attention enough to ensure his shirt was buttoned right and his tie was tied. Natasha should have joined him already, and while no one was telling him anything bad had happened, they weren’t telling him everything was okay either. 

_Dr. Banner._ Agent Hill’s voice was level and even, crystal clear over Tony’s beyond-state-of-the-art comm system, but she wasn’t the one who normally talked to Bruce, and he didn’t think hearing from her was a good thing. _There’s been a slight complication, but if you’ll proceed to the Grand Ballroom, we should have everything sorted out by the time you get there._

Bruce had been an Avenger long enough to know the phrase ‘slight complication’ could--and generally did--cover a myriad of disasters, but he pushed a hand through his hair and made sure he had his glasses before he left the room. He didn’t necessarily trust Hill to the level he trusted the other two, but he did know the last thing she wanted was an appearance from the Other Guy so it was probably fine to leave the room. He took his time, though; whatever was happening behind the scenes would play out in its own time and he thought it best not to be rushing around and drawing attention to himself. The elevators cooperated, arriving slowly, and stopping on each floor, but even with that additional bit of time-wasting, Bruce still found himself pacing in front of the ballroom doors, wondering if he should stay out in the hall or go in and trust that Natasha would find him inside. He tried to think what he would have done if this were a normal conference rather than a cover for a covert ops mission but he honestly couldn’t remember back to when he’d just been Bruce, so he decided that nobody else would know either. 

He traversed the hallway slowly, doing his best impression of an absent-minded professor killing time, smiling at the harried staff and generally trying to give off a nothing-to-see-here vibe. It worked reasonably well, right up until he was the last attendee standing around and people started staring at him. Discreetly, of course, but he could still hear the interest start to mount. 

“I’ll just go on in,” Bruce said, ostensibly to the young woman manning the tablet computer and guest list, but in reality to Agent Hill or whoever was listening. Natasha always made communicating both ways seem effortless--Bruce had heard her give an entire sit-rep and make it sound like flirting--but he thought he wasn’t doing too badly. “Dr. Banner.”

“And your plus-one?” The staffer asked politely enough, her stylus hovering over his name, but he could tell she didn’t remotely care, which was a point for him not having attracted any unwarranted attention, at least.

Bruce opened his mouth to tell her he’d apparently been stood up when an unexpected--but familiar--voice called, “Doc!” and he turned to see Clint jogging down the hall, shrugging into a dinner jacket as he moved. “Sorry, I’m late, babe,” he said as he got to where Bruce was standing. He brushed a kiss across Bruce’s cheek and then turned one of his more practiced grins on the gatekeeper. “All my fault,” Bruce heard him say in passable French, not exactly flirting, but certainly employing a brash charm for all that he had one hand low on Bruce’s back. He glanced over at Bruce as they were checked off the list and invited to enter the ballroom, a quick, flickering assessment that Bruce was ridiculously proud to meet with a smirk he’d picked up from Tony. For all that Clint being here was completely outside the mission parameters Bruce had had drilled into him, nothing in Clint's demeanor or bearing set off any alarms in Bruce's head. Whatever was wrong wasn't catastrophic; Bruce trusted Clint enough to be able to say that.

“No harm, no foul,” Bruce said out loud. From the way Clint’s grin became less practiced and more relaxed, Bruce knew he’d gotten the underlying message that Bruce wasn’t freaking out on him. When Bruce added, “I’m sure you’ll have a fascinating explanation,” it became downright wicked and Bruce was only a little surprised to find himself returning it.

* * *

The reception was a standard mix of academic one-upsmanship passing for conversation, alcohol (see: fueling the above point, Bruce thought), and some actual interpersonal interactions. Thankfully enough, no one seemed inclined to pay Bruce and Clint any special attention and they made their way across the ballroom to a relatively quiet corner without any interruptions. Clint snagged two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter, but when Bruce arched an eyebrow at him, he only smiled and murmured, "Cover story, Doc."

"Speaking of," Bruce answered. Clint had set them up in the corner at such an angle that no one could easily see their faces, at least enough that Bruce felt comfortable enough to ask outright.

"Some old friends came by unexpectedly," Clint said, raising the flute of champagne to his mouth. It was smooth and easy, very relaxed for all that Bruce could see that Clint hadn't actually taken a sip. Bruce followed suit--nothing to see in this corner, thanks, nothing but Dr. Banner and his (however unexpected) companion enjoying the reasonably adequate vintage the conference was serving--and one side of Clint's mouth quirked up in one of his barely-there but still very real smiles. "They kinda threw a wrench in Plan A, but nothing serious."

Bruce nodded, taking that to mean Natasha was fine. "I'm assuming you were the closest Plan B?"

Clint shrugged minutely and leaned closer to murmur, "Sorry about the, uh, sudden change in, uh--"

"Dancing partners?" Bruce suggested, as blandly as he could. Clint turned a laugh into a coughing fit.

"You're in luck, Doc," Clint said, when he was breathing again, and Bruce possibly took entirely too much satisfaction in the return of that wicked glint in Clint's eyes. His path and Clint's didn't overlap much, in or out of the field and any and all subtleties were generally bulldozed under the sheer force of personalities that was the Avengers in any one room at the same time, but he'd thought he'd recognized at least a small, kindred appreciation for the absurd in the other man. "I have it on the best of authorities that my dancing is… unmatched."

“You know,” Bruce said, as a man he recognized vaguely as one of the conference organizers caught sight of them and started toward their corner, his intent to engage and be a good host clearly written across his face. “I’ve heard that about you.”

“Aw, c’mon, baby, why you gotta be that way?” Clint cracked back without hesitating for so much as a heartbeat, turning so he could step up to meet the other physicist with Bruce. It took Bruce a second to realize how easily they were acting like the couple they were supposed to be, but then they were in the thick of it socially and he didn’t have time to analyze things further. 

* * *

“For the record,” Clint said through gritted teeth, “I _do not_ like this idea.”

“Duly noted,” Agent Hill answered. “I don’t see that we have much choice--”

“We can damn well abort,” Clint snapped. “We _should_ \--Nat only barely dodged being recognized by a damn goon has has no business being here, so who the hell knows who else might be running around. And it’s not like we’ve got _any_ more intel as to where the target is is holed up.”

“Clint--” Natasha started, but Bruce knew from the stubborn set to Clint’s jaw that he wasn’t going to buy anything she might say.

“The problem we were sent in to solve still remains, though,” Bruce said quietly. “Right?” He waited until Clint nodded, however reluctantly it might have been, before continuing, “And unless something’s changed since we started all this, I’m still in the best position to make that happen.”

“Doc,” Clint sighed. He sounded tired suddenly. “If this was just Nat and me and the parameters changed like this, we’d be having this conversation, trying to decide if it was worth the risk. This isn’t your deal--we shouldn’t even be considering going on.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Bruce said, and he realized he and Clint were really only talking to each other, that Natasha and Hill were letting them work through it on their own. “I understand this changes things--”

“Do you really?” Clint interrupted. It would have been easy for Bruce to take offense at the almost-condescension of the question, but Clint wasn’t being obnoxious about it. He still sounded tired and stressed. Bruce caught himself thinking that it had been a long time since someone had worried about him.

“No,” Bruce said. “I probably don’t, not the way you do.” Clint looked up at him, surprised and not doing much to hide it. Bruce decided not to examine why Clint allowing him to see behind the professional poker face he normally wore meant more than Bruce expected it to. “I do appreciate your concern, but if you’re leaning to pulling out strictly on my account, then I’d like to point out that we worked pretty well together tonight even if we were off the plan.” 

“He’s not wrong,” Natasha said. She met Clint’s glare with a level, even look of her own. “There’s nothing specific about this that says _I_ have to be the one on protection detail.”

“Yeah, except for how if I’m down here, there’s nobody up top to take the long shot.”

“You’re right,” Natasha said, not unkindly for all that her tone was brisk and unsentimental. “But that’s not something we expected to be necessary, so it’s also not a sufficient reason to scuttle to mission.”

“Nat--”

“Being the on-the-ground back-up is within your mission parameters,” Hill said, and she, too, was not unkind, even if she was very definitely taking charge. “Are you taking yourself off-team?” Agents and specialists could do that; Bruce very clearly remembered Clint explaining that part of an operational team hierarchy. They were all expected to know their limits and know when something would exceed them because, as Clint put it, 'playing cowboy just gets people killed.' Of course, Bruce could also read between the lines and infer that the team he’d found himself a part of didn’t do it no matter what, but that was why they were the best.

“Barton?” Hill was neutral, but Bruce thought she was steeling herself for Clint’s reaction.

“Fine,” Clint bit out. “We’ll play it your way, but I’m warning you, I am going to be the most possessive son of a bitch you’ve ever seen.”

“I can work with that,” Bruce said. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops, this tipped over to an Explicit rating with this chapter.

‘Possessive’ wasn’t quite right, Bruce decided sometime during first full day of the conference. ‘Attentive’ was probably closer to the truth. Clint was just... there, no matter where Bruce was. He met Bruce after each session and walked with him to wherever he needed to go. He showed up bearing gifts: a bottle of water, or a snack, or Bruce's tablet. In the afternoon, he was waiting for Bruce outside the breakout session with a _sweater_. 

“Your hands were freezing after the morning session,” Clint said out loud. He leaned close and kissed Bruce lightly on the cheek. “We had some weird interference on comms; I'm just getting a visual on you,” he murmured. “Geniuses,” he added to the economics adviser from the Sorbonne who was watching them with a bit more interest than Bruce thought was polite. “They’re so busy solving problems nobody’s even thought of yet that they forget how easy it is to get sick.”

He brushed a another kiss across Bruce’s cheekbone and wandered off after confirming their dinner plans. 

“It’s -- somewhat new,” Bruce managed to say, smiling at the woman with what he hoped was the right body language, something that said they were just in that first, intense phase of a relationship, not that they were going overboard in their faking of everything.

“Charming,” the economist murmured. “So devoted.”

Bruce thought that meant they were doing okay. Clint apparently agreed. 

“Tash,” Clint said, all but choking on his laughter. “Did you hear that? I’m _charming_.”

“That is not exactly the first word I think of when your name comes up in conversation,” Natasha said dryly. “But you usually don’t treat me as nicely as you’re treating Dr. Banner.”

“Yeah, well, _he’s_ never given me a concussion. And he doesn’t steal the covers.” This was technically true, since Clint had spent most of the night in the oversized armchair in their suite, re-reading the mission specs from the point of view of his new role and murmuring questions and hypotheses to Natasha over comms. 

“Thank you, Agent Barton,” Hill said, and for a wonder, Bruce thought she might have been hiding a snicker behind her usual brisk tone. “We’re indebted to you for that mental picture.”

“Always a pleasure, ma’am,” Clint answered. Bruce pictured the cheeky grin he thought would be accompanying the words and thus was smiling himself as he dragged the sweater on over his button-down. The economist was practically beaming at him.

Later that night, after Bruce and Clint had joined several other attendees and their spouses for drinks and dinner and returned to their room, Clint sat with a tablet and worked through Bruce’s schedule for the next day, coordinating check-ins with Agent Hill.

“I’m not expecting any trouble, Doc,” Clint said when he noticed Bruce watching him instead of going over his own notes. “I’m just making sure everyone gets the point that somebody’s gonna notice if you’re not where you’re supposed to be.” He was quiet and matter-of-fact. “I know this isn’t what you signed on for, me all up in your business--” 

“It’s fine,” Bruce said. “I don’t go out in the field a lot, but I do listen in on debriefs--I know how often you and the team shift things on the fly. It’s only for the rest of the week, and... as much as I’m not used to it, I’m not at all opposed to you knowing exactly where I’m supposed to be.” He looked back down at his notes. “The sweater was a little much, though.”

“Hey,” Clint said. “Your hands _were_ freezing this morning.” When Bruce snuck a look at him, he had his eyes on the tablet, but there was a little smile lurking in the corners of his eyes. “I was just multitasking--SHIELD likes efficiency in their agents.” 

“How comforting,” Bruce said and couldn’t entirely hide a smile of his own when Clint snorted ever so faintly. 

The first session in the morning was key; as far as SHIELD had been able to determine, their target was unofficially due to take part in the roundtable. Clint insisted that Bruce get as much sleep as possible. "Seriously, Doc, even with no guarantees he’s going to be there, if you stay awake and stress over it, you’ll jinx it." Clint glared at the tablet. "Then he'll definitely show and you'll be stuck trying to deal on no sleep."

“I had no idea you were so superstitious,” Bruce said.

“Nah, just... too many close encounters with scenarios going to hell in a heartbeat.” Clint met Bruce’s eyes with a relative amount of calm, but also a deep layers of regret and sadness. “You never know and the more prepared you are, the more options you have.”

Bruce nodded, acknowledging the truth in what Clint was saying, but added, “That goes both ways.” He reached over and tapped lightly on Clint’s tablet. “You need sleep, too--you barely got any last night.”

“I’m fine, Doc,” Clint answered, clearly on auto-pilot. “I’ve gone a lot longer on less--”

Bruce shook his head, not entirely sure why he cared whether or not Clint slept. The man was an experienced agent, one of the best. Presumably, he knew his own limits, but the more Bruce thought about it, the less he liked it. He hadn’t had much input right after the Chitauri, but he hadn’t much liked the lengths Clint felt were necessary to prove himself fit for duty. Steve and Natasha had finally gotten him to ease off; Bruce finally pinned his current unease with not liking the thought that he might be the cause of a new round of the same behavior. 

“You’ve gone through the whole day twice at the macro level and worked your way through the morning sessions and their logistics at the fine grain, yes?” Bruce pointed out, waiting until Clint nodded. “Then you can get at least a little sleep; the afternoon details might change depending on what happen in the morning.” 

Clint shook his head, already going back to his files and timetables and blueprints, so Bruce added, “What happened to ‘if you stay awake and stress over it...?’” When Clint only looked at him with narrowed eyes, Bruce went for the kill. “Of course, I could be wrong, me not having a lot of experience with these sorts of things, so I should probably consult with Hill and Romanoff, shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, low blow, Doc.” Clint looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed, impressed or amused at Bruce’s threat. “I had no idea _you_ were so sneaky.”

“Well, you know, given where we are, it seemed logical to put forth a hypothesis and see if the results hold it true,” Bruce said, smiling. 

Clint snorted. “Yeah, yeah--scientific conference and all that.” He didn’t actually smile but Bruce was still certain he’d decided amused was the way to react. “Still pretty sneaky.”

He put the tablet aside and stood, though, so Bruce was more than happy to own any manipulative behavior. Clint stretched, working loose the kinks in his back and shoulders and shaking out his arms and hands, and--

Bruce busied himself with tucking his own notes and tablet away. Clint worked conscientiously--and damned hard--to keep his physical presence on par with the team despite his lack of genetic enhancements; it wasn’t in the least appropriate for Bruce to be watching him like he sometimes did, especially not now. 

Clint finished with a final pop of his spine that had Bruce wincing and then wandered into the bathroom. He reappeared a few minutes later, already changed into an old, faded t-shirt and sweatpants, a toothbrush hanging from his mouth. Bruce watched, somewhat bemused, as he typed another quick note on his tablet and disappeared again. 

“I’m good,” Clint called. “Kill the lights whenever.”

The bed in the suite was an over-sized king; the entire team probably could have slept comfortably on it. The two of them had more than enough space. It still probably should have felt awkward, or at least Bruce had expected it to be a little odd. It didn’t play out that way, though. Bruce turned out the lights; Clint came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and settled himself on the other side of the bed and that was that.

* * *

The morning dawned overcast and gray. Clint stood at the window and frowned out at the clouds pressing down the mountains and misting over the lake, but shook his head when Bruce asked if there was a problem.

“Sorry, Doc,” he said, bending down to adjust his ankle holster. He also had a knife in a sheath at the small of his back and a second shoulder holster. Bruce had seen him arm himself for serious missions; this was nothing compared to that, but it was still disconcerting to see how easily he lived with lethal force. “I’ve just spent too many years worrying about sight lines and visibility. That part of my brain is on auto-pilot and it takes me a couple seconds to step away from it. Didn’t meant to freak you out.” 

“No, I’m fine,” Bruce assured him. Amazingly enough, it was even true. This had the potential to be the first contact in what they had planned as an entire dance with the target and Bruce was finding himself keyed up, but not nervous. He spent a solid half-hour reviewing engagement strategies with Natasha, who was, as everyone pointed out, incredibly good at making people see what she wanted them to see; and then made an appearance at the breakfast networking reception, followed by the seemingly requisite meet-up with Clint for the walk to what Bruce was beginning to think of as The Roundtable Mission. If Tony had been there, Bruce felt certain he would have had JARVIS playing heroic music.

“All this and he probably won’t even show,” Bruce muttered as Clint gave him one last comm check and sent him off to pretend to be fascinated by a sociopath with an array of degrees. Once inside the meeting room, Bruce followed Natasha’s advice and found a seat a few rows back ( _The front row is too eager; back row, too uncaring--you’re trying to make him notice you, Bruce_ ), doing his best to act as though this was nothing more than a somewhat interesting presentation. 

The facilitators and panel members began filtering in; Bruce exchanged polite nods or murmured greetings with his fellow audience members as the meeting room filled. Their target still didn’t show. Five minutes after the scheduled starting time, the moderator leaned into his microphone and announced that they would start without a full panel. 

Clint sighed in disappointment; it was the smallest of exhalations, so quiet Bruce wouldn’t have heard it without Tony’s comms. Bruce agreed silently. They both knew it had never been a sure thing that the target would show, but it was still a let-down. He kept up the polite interest, though. Both Clint and Natasha had been very insistent about maintaining his cover no matter what. 

The moderator was clearly thrown by not having his star panel member; he was all over the place trying to cover for the lapse, repeating himself and laughing nervously. Bruce would feel some sympathy for the man, but he was the one who'd decided to build a panel around a reclusive genius with a reputation for (alleged) evil--Bruce would have thought he might have had a backup plan in place, but apparently not. 

"Tell me this isn't as bad as it sounds," Clint murmured as the moderator finally stuttered to a halt.

Bruce snorted under his breath, quietly enough that his neighbors couldn't hear over the anemic applause that was greeting the rest of the panel.

"Uh, you've got a hundred and twelve minutes to go," Clint said. "Does that help?"

Bruce sighed. He didn't do much to mask that but he felt it fit with his cover. If he'd been attending this session solely for the subject matter, he _would_ be pretty annoyed at the hash it was turning into.

People did begin slipping out after the twenty-minute mark. Bruce tried not to seethe with envy; he was staying through the whole thing. That was the plan and absent any life-altering (or incident-engaging) evidence to the contrary, they were sticking to it. Bruce settled back and let the discussion--such as it was--flow over him. He’d just decided to treat it like being somewhere he didn’t understand the language because listening to the droning was making him crazy when there was a sudden flurry at the side door and a group was admitted. Even if Bruce hadn’t spent the better part of two days looking at computer-enhanced but still grainy and poorly-lit video and was just going off the candids SHIELD had from his undergraduate days, he would have recognized their target in the center of the group. All the energy that had drained out of him came roaring back back and he clamped down on it, allowing only a small portion of interest to show.

“Oh, yeah,” Clint breathed. “Hill’s getting all kinds of hits on the facial recognition software. Not just our guy, but half his posse are pinging the hi-guys-let’s-have-a-chat roster. No wonder Nat nearly got made; every goon this side of the yakuza’s here. Oh, man, Fury’s gonna have kittens over this.”

Bruce turned the laugh he couldn’t hold back into a semi-convincing coughing fit and made a note to repay Clint in kind when they got back. By the time he got himself under control, the panel was fully engaged, debating the pros and cons of adequate testing requirements with renewed vigor. At the very least, Bruce having to focus on not laughing in their faces meant that he hadn’t been embarrassing himself with kiss-up questions, like half the panel and audience. Natasha had been very firm about how he was to project his interest and (to Bruce’s relief) the most basic of her edicts had deemed fawning or flattery to be the kiss of death. _We want him to notice you, to want to convince you of the necessity of his plans and ideas. Nothing spills more information than an ego bent on proving itself right._

During the rest of the discussions, Bruce didn’t have much trouble projecting a certain level of disbelief--as Clint murmured once or twice, ‘batshit’ did have a nice ring to it--but he wasn’t sure if he was getting the right level of unwilling interest out there, at least not until the session ended and it was simple enough to establish eye contact with the target. A few moments later, they were shaking hands and making small talk (which Bruce normally loathed, but he found that finding more and more innocuous, bland topics only amped the wave of energy he was riding, as though the very inanity of it all was fueling his focus.) 

They walked out of the room together, Bruce biting back the arguments to all the logical fallacies being employed--actually, Clint counting them off quietly made it much easier to nod and smile and play along, he’d have to remember to tell Clint that. They came to a stop at the entry to the lobby, everyone looking expectantly at Bruce, and he realized there’d been an invitation extended, one for lunch off-site.

“I find it so much more comfortable to have a retreat from the world, is that not true for you as well, Dr. Banner?”

 _Doc_ , Clint was saying. _Doc, I’m almost there, don’t--_

“It is,” Bruce answered, nodding easily. Clint swore creatively but his face was calm when he stepped out of the elevator and started across the lobby toward Bruce. Bruce met his eyes, just a quick glance so Clint knew he’d seen him, but then turned back to his conversation. “It’s very kind of you to invite me.”

“Not at all. It is most selfish of me: I wish to know more about your research--few have your level of knowledge of gamma rays.” 

Bruce smiled, and then nodded toward Clint. “You’ll excuse me while I let my partner know about the change in plans.”

Bruce had spent the last year living in close quarters with Clint. He’d seen him gearing up for a mission and coming down off the adrenaline rush after one was over. He’d seen him annoyed to death with Tony, arguing with Natasha, and furious with SHIELD or the Council, but he didn’t think he’d ever quite seen this particular level of intensity. 

“Before you start,” Bruce said, keeping his voice low, “This is too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

“You know what they say about things that are too good to be true,” Clint hissed. “You do not need to be doing this. We’ve got eyes on him now; we can trail him whenever he leaves--”

“ _If_ he doesn’t lose you again,” Bruce said, because this guy had done that before, more than once. It was the reason Bruce was here--any scrap of information they could find would go toward building a better profile--and they both knew it, even if Clint didn’t like it. “It’s too good to pass up,” Bruce repeated. “Even if he is smart enough not to let anything important slip, it’s another piece to add to the puzzle.”

“We’re missing something,” Clint said. “This guy never does anything on the spur of the moment--why this? Why now?”

“I don’t think we have time to figure that out,” Bruce said. “I won’t do anything risky--” Clint broke character enough to glare at him and Bruce got the message that he was already way over Clint’s personal definition of the word, which should have given Bruce pause, but wasn’t. He stopped and checked, and yes, his heart rate and respiration were a bit elevated, but there was nothing that felt like he was on the verge of an incident. “This guy,” Bruce said, fumbling for an explanation as much for himself as for Clint. “He can do unspeakable harm.” He waited until Clint acknowledged him with a short nod, and then continued, “If I can help stop that, it’s worth going a little bit further than we originally planned.”

Clint stayed tense for another long second, but finally eased back a little. “Okay,” he sighed. “Hill says she has every municipal video feed in the city online; we’ll be tracking you there.”

“I swear, nothing stupid,” Bruce said. “And I mean the Pepper-definition of stupid, not Tony’s.” 

“Or mine,” Clint said, with a quirk of his lips that Bruce answered with a smile of his own. Every time they came back from some situation, there always seemed to be some kind of heated discussion with respect to Clint and his fondness for high, unstable places and his methods of removing himself from the same. Clint slid back into the boyfriend persona and straightened Bruce’s collar. “See if you can’t work your possessive boyfriend and how he’s looking forward to dinner since he’s not getting any lunchtime action into the conversation, yeah?”

“Yes, dear,” Bruce answered. It hit him then, what he was about to do, and he’d have been lying if he didn’t acknowledge the rush he was getting from it. Clint’s eyes said he understood and if nothing else, this mission was providing Bruce with all manner of insight into the superhero psyche. He took a deliberately deep breath and then turned back to meet up with the target. 

There was a fleet of SUVs waiting at the hotel entrance; Bruce took his place and politely refused a drink for the ride. His host, apparently determined to maintain the fiction of colleagues meeting for lunch (or, hell, Bruce didn’t know, maybe that was how he spun it to himself) made idle chatter as they drove. Every time the SUV made a turn, Clint made sure Bruce knew they still had his position; each quiet click or tap signalling to Bruce that someone did indeed have his back. 

The arrived at a small estate just outside of the city and Bruce was ushered into a library, while his host excused himself to take a call. The library was more of a showpiece than a working office, and there was a table laid for two in front of a large window with a view down to the city and the lake. Bruce didn’t see anything that screamed “I’m important, look at me!” but everything seemed to be going fine, right up until Bruce heard a sudden scuffle over the comm system and what sounded like punches connecting to a face and the comm went dead. 

After that, it wasn’t much of a surprise to find that the windows didn’t open and the door was locked from the outside.

“So much for your brilliant plan to help, Banner,” Bruce said with a sigh.

* * *

Bruce could hear people moving around outside the library, but no one made any effort to join him. The comm unit remained silent, but Bruce had distinctly heard Clint’s signal as he’d stepped down out of the SUV so SHIELD presumably knew where he was. He found himself less concerned about his own well-being than with Clint’s. He hadn’t heard any gunfire, but he’d seen how much damaged Natasha could inflict with nothing but her own diminutive body; he didn’t want to think what might have happened once the comm unit died. 

As a distraction, he searched the shelves and tables in the room more thoroughly. Most of what he found was nothing exciting, but there were bits and pieces that seemed anomalous: journals that didn’t fit with the rest of the research, papers and notes that were scattered and random. Tony never spoke much about how he designed the original suit, but once, during a bad week when neither of them were sleeping and not even the lure of endless experimentation was doing anything much to help, he’d shown Bruce what he called his favorite party trick: how he could design on multiple pieces of paper so that his sketches looked like nothing but scribbles until you stacked them up properly. The notes Bruce was finding had that kind of a feel to them, and if nothing else, Bruce could at least see if he could puzzle them out. 

But later, though. 

When Bruce looked in the mirror, he could see the faint, greenish cast in his eyes; it was echoed in the low, angry hum deep in his subconscious. It was was containable, but for the foreseeable future, he decided he’d focus on the here and now. He tossed a cushion from one of the chairs onto the floor and made himself comfortable. The fact that the cushion was exquisitely embroidered and probably an antique, totally unused to such treatment... Well, that was a nice bonus. He focused on his breathing, in and out and in again, and gradually, the rest of the world fell away. 

Bruce didn’t stay down long,and he could still feel the Other Guy lurking on the edges of his consciousness, but he felt much more centered when he stood up. If anything, the restless energy he’d been feeling the whole day was blending with the more familiar anger, smoothing over the edges until it all felt seamless. He wandered back to the table where he’d set all the odd papers and notes and gave them an unenthusiastic once-over. It was better that he keep himself occupied while he waited, but he still couldn’t help but think how much easier the analysis would be if JARVIS was there to help.

“You’re going soft, Banner,” he said, the start of a suck-it-up speech, but before he could really get going (he’d been very good at telling himself to suck it up and deal during his years on the run), there was a sudden clamor in the hall and the door--also, an antique, but with intricate carvings rather than embroidery--bowed in on itself before it splintered and more-or-less imploded from what Bruce was assuming was C4.

“Doc?” Clint’s voice came out of the lingering smoke a second before he stepped (limped, Bruce thought) through the doorway. Bruce wasn’t ashamed to admit he had to hold onto the table for a few seconds to keep from falling over with relief. “Doc! Are you--”

“I’m fine,” Bruce said, straightening up and taking a half-step around the table. “What happened--why are you--?”

“Look, we don’t have time. Tasha has the cops on the way and neither one of us can be here when they get here.” Clint grabbed Bruce’s arm and started trying to steer him toward the door. “You remember, right? The whole sovereign nation thing--”

“Yes, I remember,” Bruce said, digging in his heels. “No time to get formal permission from the Swiss--complete denial on the federal and international level if anything bad happens---standard operating procedure... You were very thorough with your briefing, but you need to see this.” 

He shoved the papers out on the table, explaining--or trying to--as he went. Clint shook his head, saying, “I’ve got no idea, but let me--” as he took pictures of everything as quickly as possible. “We need to move,” he said, turning over the table and dumping armloads of books onto the floor, effectively covering up that Bruce had collected certain papers and files and journals in the mess. “ _Now_ , Bruce.”

“Right,” Bruce said; he’d only been hesitating because he’d been cataloging all the ways Clint wasn’t moving with his usual grace. From what Bruce could see, he was betting there were some bruised ribs in there along with the knee issue that looked to be causing the limp. He didn’t like the way Clint was favoring his left side, but he’d been around long enough to know not to bring it up at the moment, to just follow along out of the eerily quiet house and out to where an older, battered mini sat in the sweep of the drive.

“You think--are you cool to drive?” Clint was pulling an array of weaponry out of the back seat. “We need to get to a safe house so Hill can send in the extraction team and I’m not betting on them just letting us make a clean break for it. It’d be better if I could just shoot if we needed me to.”

Bruce knew what Clint was asking, and it didn’t have much to do with whether Bruce could drive a stick-shift. He drew in a long, slow breath and let it out. He was still running on the relieved high of seeing a friendly face walk in the door. (It could possibly also have some deep-seated roots in the satisfaction of seeing that door implode, but he didn’t think the reason mattered as much as the result.)

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “If you can tell me where to go, I can drive.” Clint nodded once and Bruce got into the car. He started the engine and said, “I realize you might not have a choice, but the more you can tell me, the easier it is to... manage. So, if, I don’t know, if we’re being followed, tell me and I’ll keep you in the loop about the Other Guy.”

“Deal,” Clint said, easing into the passenger side and laying out a fairly disturbing array of guns on the floor in front of him. “Also, life would probably go more easily if you didn’t get us pulled over when I’ve got the gun locker laying out here. The Swiss have a thing about guns and foreign nationals carrying them and Hill probably wouldn’t leave me behind when she came to get you, but she’s kinda touchy sometimes.”

“Excellent point; I’ll keep that in mind,” Bruce said. He eased off the clutch and got them moving, following Clint’s low directions. The trip was a blur of tension, every turn winding it tighter and tighter. Even once they ditched the car-- _No telling if I actually got to everyone who saw me get there_ , Clint said, and Bruce filled in the part about exactly how he ‘got’ to them--and made it the rest of the way by train and on foot, Bruce was acutely conscious of every person who looked at him, every student with a backpack that might be loaded with something other than books, every average-looking business person or housewife with her string shopping bags. The only thing that was keeping him anchored was Clint at his shoulder, one hand low on Bruce’s back and the same quiet, calm voice that had been in Bruce’s comm unit live and in person. 

The house that Clint led them to was plain and unremarkable, neatly-kept and completely forgettable, except that once they got to the front door, there was an electronic lock instead of an ordinary deadbolt; and then, when they got into the vestibule, Clint entered another code and leaned in for a retinal scan. 

“Home sweet home,” he said as the lock on the inside door clicked open. He ushered Bruce into the apartment, slamming the door behind them, not relaxing even when the locks engaged. Bruce watched silently as he checked the windows and blinds, crossing the small room with a decided limp before he picked up the landline phone and made a call that sounded like nonsense even after Bruce factored in his own less than perfect French. 

“We’re good,” Clint said, evidently mistaking Bruce’s frown for concern for his own safety. “We should have a pick-up inside of a couple of hours. Morning by the latest.”

Bruce acknowledged him with an absent nod but continued to watch carefully as Clint paced the apartment. 

“Really,” Clint added. “Not just blowing smoke--Hill can be a bitch, but if she says they’re coming, they’re coming.” 

“I believe you,” Bruce said. Under his professional deadpan, Clint’s expression was doubtful. “I was just realizing you weren’t limping while we were on foot--at least not until we got here.” 

“Limps are noticeable,” Clint said with a shrug. “Anybody looking with intent is gonna see it. Even people who aren’t tend to remember it. Bad news when you’re on the run.”

“So, you--what? Turn off whatever hurt enough to cause the limp in the first place?”

“Nah,” Clint said, and his grin was sharp-edged and more than a little bit manic. “It’s not like it goes away or anything.”

“Wonderful,” Bruce said.

“First time you see somebody made because they couldn’t fake being okay, it pretty much lights a fire under you. Nat walked me out of Budapest with a bullet in her thigh. This is just a couple of bruises.” 

Bruce could understand--the human brain could override more stimuli than most people imagined, and a determined, trained one could take it even further--but that didn’t mean he had to like when that override basically became the default. 

“Bruises or not, maybe I should take a look at it?” Bruce kept it light and off-hand; he’d seen how little Clint liked being forced into Medical. He knew why and he thought Clint knew that, too. “Even just some ice would probably help.”

Clint hesitated for a few long seconds and then sighed. “Yeah, I don’t guess it’d hurt.” He made his way over to the small dining area and eased into one of the chairs, managing to somehow take the weight off his knee but not put too much pressure on his ribs. “There should be a pretty decent triage kit in the bathroom.”

Bruce found the kit without trouble and wasn’t surprised to see he probably could have performed at least a basic surgery with what was stocked. By the time he got back into the main room of the apartment, Clint had his pant leg rolled up and was cautiously poking at the reddened and swollen knee.

“Now that we’re here, and we presumably have some time, what happened?” Bruce asked, more as a distraction as he worked the knee as gently as possible, looking for anything seriously not right. “Not just with this, but all of it.”

“Don’t exactly know,” Clint said, on a hiss. “We’re thinking they made you--” Bruce looked up sharply at that, everything coming on point at the thought of one more group wanting to take him apart and see what made him tick, low, snarling voices telling him to _run_ , _now_ , but Clint was already shaking his head. “No, no, not the Other Guy.” He met Bruce’s eyes steadily, evenly, his own eyes blue and open, and after a few seconds, Bruce found the automatic panic and fear easing off. He nodded once and went back to checking Clint’s knee. “And it wasn’t you as SHIELD or anything either,” Clint said. “When they hit me, they were--” He broke off with a pained gasp as Bruce probed hard at his kneecap. “They were coming after a normal guy, not an agent. They wanted to rough me up, keep me out of the way.”

Bruce didn’t find anything obviously wrong--not that he could really tell without proper equipment--so he reached for a chemical ice pack, smacking it hard on the floor and laying it on Clint’s knee. Clint sighed out as the cold started to penetrate. 

“They must have known something was off, though,” Bruce said, sitting back on his heels and looking up at Clint. “They came after you hard enough to do all this.”

“Nah, they weren’t all that good,” Clint said, shrugging, and then wincing. His ribs, Bruce supposed. “I just let them land a couple of good ones to see if they’d let anything drop--”

Bruce was staring, he knew; he probably looked like an idiot, gaping up at Clint the way he was, but-- “You _let_ them beat you up?” 

“Well, you notice they didn’t land anything on my face, right?” One side of Clint’s mouth quirked up into something that was close to a smile. Some of what Bruce was feeling--it was too chaotic for him to quantify other than it wasn’t good--must have shown on Bruce’s face because Clint let it fade and added, “It’s fine, Doc--I needed to know what they knew, especially since you were off with their boss.”

It was the last part that was really getting to Bruce: he was off with their boss because he’d insisted and Clint ended up allowing himself to be a punching bag. Bruce needed to remember that he was part of a team now, and on that topic, he could stop with the self-recriminations for the moment and at least try to take care of the consequences of his actions. 

“Let me see your ribs,” Bruce said, motioning for Clint to unbutton his shirt. He kept his focus on Clint’s hands, rough and capable on the buttons, so unlike anything Clint wore usually, until he felt like he could trust his voice. “And did you? Find out what they knew?” 

“Knew they didn’t know jack ‘bout you,” Clint said, through clenched teeth as Bruce felt as carefully as possible for broken ribs. The skin there was reddened, too, and was almost feverish from the blood that had pooled under it. Bruce knew it was going to bruise spectacularly, but he didn’t feel any bones moving in wrong ways. Clint probably already knew that, just from how well he could or couldn’t move, so Bruce kept his diagnosis to himself and listened to the rest of what Clint had to say. “Let them think I was out and heard enough to know they wanted your brain, Doc, just your brain, and they didn’t want me with it enough to tip anybody off that you were gone for a while.” 

Bruce sat back and reached for the ice packs, but Clint stopped him. “Just tape ‘em. Ice’d be nice, but I’d rather have the extra support if we have to move fast.” 

Bruce nodded and started tearing long strips off the roll of tape. “Thank you,” he said quietly. 

“Just part of our stellar customer service, Doc,” Clint said, and Bruce had to admire the ease of the deflection, even if he didn’t particularly like it happening.

“Thanks anyway.” 

Clint stared at him for a few seconds, as though he wasn’t quite certain if Bruce was being serious, but then nodded. “Welcome,” he said finally.

Bruce started the first strip of tape along the top of the reddened area. “Breathe out,” he murmured, and wrapped it, smooth and tight, around to Clint’s back. “Again,” Bruce said, adding the second piece, lower this time. Clint was still against Bruce, only exhaling obediently and shifting when Bruce needed to get the tape around to his back, but his breath hissed in as Bruce leaned into to him, reaching for where the strips ended.

“Sorry,” Bruce said, smoothing the palm of his hand down Clint’s back, pressing the tape ends more firmly in place. “I just want to make sure this is--” He broke off as Clint flinched away from him. “Clint?”

“Yeah,” Clint said, but his voice was stretched thin and he kept his head turned away from Bruce.

“Is there--did I hit something else?” 

“I’m fine,” Clint answered, which was clearly so far from the truth Bruce would have laughed if he wasn’t so worried. “I--just... are you done?”

“Possibly,” Bruce said slowly. “As long as you’re sure there isn’t anything else, because if we missed a break, we’re risking internal injuries--bleeding, punctured lung--” 

Clint turned back to face him, shaking his head and it was Bruce’s turn to go still as he finally got a good look at Clint. He was flushed and mouth was swollen from where he’d been biting his lip, but it was his eyes--pupils dilated so much that they were almost entirely black, just a thin ring of blue. His eyes stopped Bruce cold and he was suddenly, acutely aware that he was kneeling between Clint’s legs, all but draped across his lap from how he’d been reaching to smooth down the last bits of tape.

“I’m sorry--” Bruce started.

“‘m fine,” Clint repeated. “You didn’t--it’s not your fault I--I’ve kinda been thinking about what’d be like to be with you for real.” He was watching Bruce with that same honesty that had been there when he’d assured Bruce that no one new was hunting him. “Or that I’m fucked enough in the head that it doesn’t matter how much it hurts when you’re touching me.”

He said the words evenly enough, but even if Bruce hadn’t been listening to him, relying on him, for days now, he’d have heard the razored edge of self-loathing under it all. Clint was still again, waiting for Bruce’s reaction. Waiting, Bruce realized, for that self-loathing to be actualized through Bruce.

“Things like that,” Bruce said, making very sure his own voice conveyed nothing that could be remotely construed as condemning. “They are what they are.” He touched the tape edges one more time, forcing himself to ignore the warm skin they gave way to, because whatever else might happen here and now, he needed to be sure he’d done his best to help. Clint was tense and unmoving as Bruce took his hand away and sat back on his heels. He let his hands rest on his thighs and waited until Clint relaxed, even if only fractionally.

“It is intimate, though. This.” Bruce gestured between Clint and himself, and then made his hand return to his own thigh, no matter how much it wanted to keep reaching for something more. Some _one_ more. “The trust it takes to let someone near you when you’re hurting,” he stopped and breathed in slowly, carefully, and let the breath trickle out before he finished, “even before you get to the part where I’m that person.”

Clint’s eyes were still dark with want and need; Bruce could see the pulse beating fast and hard under his jaw. He thought it matched his own wild heartbeat. Clint’s hand, though; his hand was rock-solid and steady as he reached out to touch Bruce’s face, his jaw, his cheekbone. Bruce closed his eyes and the touch, careful and sure for all that it was barely there, moved to trace his mouth, the curve of his lower lip. 

“Is this,” Clint said. “Bruce, is this--?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, opening his eyes and kneeling up so he could reach Clint’s mouth with his own, so that he could take his first taste. “ _Yes_.” 

He wanted to take his time, find out everything that made Clint crazy, but then Clint moaned almost soundlessly against him and opened his mouth under Bruce’s and Bruce couldn’t remember the last time anyone had wanted him so desperately. He licked into Clint’s mouth, drinking down the small, helpless noises Clint was making and letting his hands have everything they’d been wanting. 

Clint’s hands came up to hold his face, and Bruce turned his face into him, every callus a rough counterpoint to the careful way Clint touched him. Bruce mirrored that care as he traced down over Clint’s shoulders and arms, inside his shirt and, lightly, so lightly, over the ribs he’d just bandaged until he could dip the tips of his fingers just inside the waistband of Clint’s khakis, until he could tease at the button holding them together.

Clint shuddered against him, and Bruce let himself indulge in the pleasure of being wanted before he asked, “Yes?”

“Yeah,” Clint choked out. “Yes. Please, yes.”

Bruce did take his time then, easing open the button and sliding his hand down over Clint, learning what he liked, what made him move mindlessly into Bruce. He stroked Clint deliberately, pushing him hard with the edge of his thumbnail before soothing him back down with light touches from the pads of his fingers, doing it again and again, until Clint was drawn as tight as one of his bows, shaking and silent and taut, and all for Bruce. 

“Now,” Bruce murmured, his hand moving with one final stroke, dragging his nails in a long, twisting spiral that had Clint arching up helplessly and coming with a raw, choked cry. Bruce stroked him through it roughly, drawing his orgasm out, taking pleasure in just watching until he couldn’t ignore the demands of his own body any further.

He fumbled open his pants with shaking, clumsy hands and groaned as he got one, still wet and slick with Clint’s come, wrapped hard around his cock. He wasn’t going to last long, he knew that but then Clint said, “Bruce, _Bruce_ ,” and he reached out blindly. Clint caught his hand in a crushing grip, and when Bruce looked up, Clint was watching him through eyes still narrowed with his own pleasure, watching him jerk himself off with the same hand that had given that pleasure to Clint and that was _it_. He came hard enough that he was shaking and shaking and Clint never looked away, never let go of his hand. 

Bruce didn’t know how long they stayed in that frozen tableau, or how much longer they would have stayed, or what they could possibly say to each other. Before any of that came to a head, the phone rang, loud and shrill, breaking the silence and shocking them out of their stillness.

“Yeah,” Clint said into it. “Yeah, okay, got it.” He threw the phone onto the table and scrubbed his hand hard over the back of his head. “Pick-up in five,” he said to Bruce, and there was a mad scramble to pull themselves together and get the brace from the triage kit on Clint’s knee before the anonymous black SUV slowed to a stop outside their door and they were back to Agent Barton and Dr. Banner.


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce had gone through debriefings before, but after a transformation he was usually exhausted and generally didn’t remember details from when the Other Guy was in control. The times he’d been involved for his scientific knowledge tended to keep him back in the command center; this was the first time he’d ever actually had information to relay from the active portion of an operation.

He’d always thought he was a fairly observant person, but hearing Clint lay out the particulars of the house Bruce had been held in put the lie to that. Bruce knew Clint had been in the study for less than five minutes, but there was nothing that Bruce could add to his description of the room and the papers Bruce had assembled. Bruce did, however, make a point to mention the injuries to Clint’s knee and ribs, since he could tell Clint was set to gloss over them. 

“It’s probably nothing, but it won’t hurt to have a scan or two done.” 

Agent Hill made a note on her tablet and nodded to the triage nurse who was there to represent the medical team, ignoring Clint’s sigh with what Bruce felt sure was years of experience. “And you, Dr. Banner?” she asked, her stylus poised. “Nothing of a physical nature to report?”

“I’m clear,” Bruce said. Hill looked at him skeptically, but it was the truth so Bruce didn’t have any problem staring her down. The problem was, of course, that he was fine while Clint wasn’t, but Bruce had no intention of discussing that with anyone. He made his way back to the flight deck and met up with the helicopter waiting to take him back to the Tower. It was just him on the flight; when he asked, the pilot told him that Natasha was on standby to make sure Clint didn’t skip out on Medical. 

“SOP, Dr. Banner,” the pilot said, her voice politely reassuring. “It works both ways with those two, just like blackmail--Coulson set it up years ago. He used to say it was the only reliable way to keep them from stealing supplies and doctoring themselves.”

Even having known Clint and Natasha for only a year, and one in which they spent most of their time at the Tower and not out on missions, Bruce could see the logic in that. He still felt as though he should be taking the blame for the injuries--they were, after all, received in an effort to keep him safe, but he managed not to share that with the pilot and the trip passed in relative quiet. JARVIS greeted him on the landing pad with the news that the photographs Clint had taken in the library had been uploaded to the Tower’s servers and that Tony would meet him in the computer lab to see what they could pull out of the files JARVIS was already processing.

* * *

It only took them four hours to crack the design--which turned out to be for a miniaturized gamma ray focusing system, about which Tony had a moment of utter glee before he got himself back under control and got Fury on the line to talk about seriously finding the heretofore hidden lair of their evil genius--but Bruce had been awake for over twenty-four hours by that point, not counting the quasi-nap he’d gotten on the jet between Geneva and the ‘carrier--and the only thing he cared about was finding his way to a bed. Food and a shower would also not be anything to turn down but sleep was definitely the high priority. Fortunately, it was an easy commute from the lab down to his floor.

“JARVIS?” Bruce said, leaning his head back against the wall next to the elevator. He intended to ask for a complete communication ban--barring an end-of-the-world scenario, which unfortunately wasn’t completely out of the question these days--but then the elevator doors opened and Clint was looking out at him, his expression serious and resolute. Bruce hesitated for only a split-second, then got on the elevator and asked for his floor. 

Clint stayed silent on the ride, but he followed Bruce out when the doors opened again and didn’t object when Bruce said, “Full privacy, JARVIS. And once Agent Barton leaves, you can hang the metaphorical Do Not Disturb sign.”

“Of course, Dr. Banner,” JARVIS answered, ending with the chime that indicated that the privacy protocols Tony was so proud of were engaged. That left Bruce with Clint and a silence that would have been as awkward as it got except that Bruce was so far past exhausted he couldn’t be bothered. 

“We got it,” Bruce said. “The design.” He wandered toward the kitchen and the cupboard of tea that remained stocked at all times. He didn’t really need anything to drink and he doubted tea was high on Clint’s list of preferred post-mission beverages, but it gave him something to do with his hands. “It looks like something out of Buck Rogers.”

“I’m guessing Stark loved putting that one together,” Clint said, still trailing along behind Bruce. Now that Bruce knew to look for him disguising any pain he might be in, there were a few, tiny tells: a tightness at the corner of his eyes, a certain deliberate control in how he moved. 

“There might have been a dozen or two Marvin the Martian jokes,” Bruce admitted. “From both of us.”

“Nothing not cool about ray guns.” Clint grinned for a second, a true and honest smile that reached his eyes and took years off the fatigue and pain in his face, but then it slid away. Bruce busied himself with the tea, scooping leaves into the heavy ceramic mugs Pepper had gifted him with not long after he’d moved in and taking full advantage of the instant hot water faucet. Clint accepted the one Bruce pushed across the counter to him, staring at it for a few seconds before wrapping his hands around it as though it might be a talisman. 

“You--” Clint started, looking up to meet Bruce’s eyes, his own back to steady and serious, the look Bruce associated with Hawkeye on the job. “I came to find you to make sure you knew that it’s okay if you feel like you need to file a complaint.” Clint glanced back down at the mug of tea Bruce had given him; and again, now that Bruce knew to look, he saw how tightly Clint was holding it, enough that his knuckles were white no matter how even his voice was. “You didn’t say anything at the debrief, but that’s not how ex-fil is supposed to go. You should--”

“No.” Bruce knew he was in that zone of exhaustion where simple things often made little or no sense, so he took a few extra seconds to think everything through Clint was saying and his own immediate reaction. He was vaguely pleased to find that thinking about it didn’t change a thing. “I should go pass out for a day. That’s all I ‘should’ be doing.” 

Clint didn’t answer, but Bruce didn’t even have to look all that closely to see how set and tight his jaw was, as though he was literally biting back his words. Bruce sighed and took his glasses off, rubbing hard between his eyes. “This can’t be the first time something like this has happened...?”

“No,” Clint admitted. “It’s not, but this--it’s not your thing, okay? I mean, yeah, Nat and I have gotten a little crazy with each other before but we both know what we’re getting into when we go out. You... You don’t do this. When we took you out there, part of what we took on was keeping you safe--”

“Which you did,” Bruce pointed out. “At a physical cost to yourself.”

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have let what happened in the safe house happen,” Clint said. “I know how that adrenaline rush works--I should have been ready for it--”

“Look, can we just-- Stop with the ‘shoulds’?” Bruce asked. “It happened. Consenting adults--” He gestured between the two of them. “Adrenaline notwithstanding.” He waited until Clint nodded once, short and sharp, and then waited a little longer to make sure there wasn’t more he needed to address. “I’m good. I appreciate your concern but it’s fine. Things happen, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint said after a long few seconds. He still didn’t sound right, even as he nodded once more and added, “Things happen. As long as you’re okay...?” 

“Dead on my feet and close to hallucinating about sleeping, but otherwise, no problems,” Bruce said. He was missing something, he knew it, but Clint was already gathering himself to go. “You’re heading that way, too, right? Bed, I mean.” 

“Yeah, I’ll get there.” Clint pushed his untouched mug of tea back toward Bruce and headed for the elevator. “Thanks,” he added, with a quick salute. It was almost all right, that salute, but it was still a hairsbreadth off of normal. Bruce was definitely missing something, but before he could marshal his brain into any kind of analytic order, the elevator arrived with typical Tower efficiency and Clint was gone.

* * *

Bruce watched and waited for a week before he allowed himself to reach the obvious conclusion: somewhere in there, he’d screwed up; and he only waited that long to kick himself because Clint was so good at projecting attitude. Twice, after watching Clint cheerfully harassing (and being harassed by) Tony over the performance of Tony’s latest round of trick arrows, Bruce convinced himself that he was imagining things, that everything between Clint and himself was fine, or would be, once the perfectly normal awkwardness of having had sex with a co-worker had faded.

That ease slipped, though, especially when it was just Clint and Bruce and only one other. Worse, Bruce could see how hard Clint worked to not let it show.That effort made the otherwise superb act Clint was putting on even worse. Bruce thought he’d be more comfortable with outright hostility rather than the tiny bit off-normal he was getting.

It didn’t help that Bruce kept finding himself watching Clint’s hands, equally as adroit and deft with his bow or throwing knives as he was with a deck of cards or his guitar. Bruce knew what those hands felt like on his skin, his face, the memories startling and visceral for something that had happened only once and so quickly. He told himself it was a normal reaction to having something he’d long since given up expecting, which was true, but didn’t make it easier to pull himself back to the present when it happened.

The tipping point came when Bruce walked into the common area to find Natasha and Clint arguing idly over what movie to cue up. Bruce honestly expected Clint to suddenly ‘remember’ a report that had to be filed and cede the argument to Natasha on his way out of the room. He was prepared to leave first, but after a split-second of total blankness, Clint invited Bruce to stay, as though nothing was off between them. Bruce could have made his own excuses--Tony running wild in the lab was always good for an exit strategy--but he was curious to see what might happen if he and Clint were in the same room voluntarily. He had his own hypothesis, of course, one that involved finally pushing matters to a head, but Clint proved him wrong, again. The three of them sat and watched the movie--something with more martial arts than Bruce would have ordinarily considered, but more plot and actual thought than he would have imagined--he and Clint interacting in that same state of almost-normal that had become their de facto standard. If it made Bruce ever so slightly crazy in short bursts, sitting next to Clint while he was trying to make things how they used to be for two solid hours quite frankly wore Bruce out.

He didn’t even have come up with a reason to leave once the movie was finished, because Clint took care of that, too, hauling himself to his feet and stretching out his back (which Bruce could sympathize with, his own was tied up in knots) and offering up the excuse that he needed to go hit the range and try out Tony’s latest batch of arrows. As diversions went, it was a little thin, but only by the slimmest of margins. Natasha watched him leave thoughtfully, and then turned her attention to Bruce. 

“May I offer an observation?” Natasha spoke with a delicate precision, as though she weighed and measured every word, but Bruce still hesitated, if only because it had been a long two hours and he wasn’t sure he was in any kind of mental shape for Natasha’s straightforwardness. She added, “Not advice, just... information.”

Bruce found himself admiring her wording, as if she knew how impossible it was for him to know there was data to be had and not want to possess it. Then again, it _was_ Natasha; of course she knew that about him. “Go on,” Bruce sighed.

“I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but--” 

“I’d think it’d be pretty obvious, even without your skills,” Bruce interrupted. Natasha waited him out with an impressive level of patience. “Sorry--I’m just... Sorry.”

“I _don’t_ know,” Natasha said evenly. “I have a fairly solid guess, but I don’t know. What I think _you_ should know is that Clint will accept whatever you decide about the relationship between the two of you.” 

“Whatever _I_ decide,” Bruce said. “Just like that.”

“Well, no,” Natasha sighed. “I think the last few hours--if not the last week--have established that.”

“Look, Natasha,” Bruce said. “I appreciate you trying to help but we haven’t-- _I_ haven’t decided anything--”

“Are you certain?” Natasha said, and let that sink in for a few seconds. “Clint is very, very good at picking up emotions without having to be told. It’s kept him alive more than once.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes told a different story; and, not for the first time, Bruce wondered about all the history between the Black Widow and Hawkeye. “It doesn’t mean he knows what to do with what he finds, but it’s there to start.”

There didn’t seem to be a simple answer to that, but at least Bruce’s brain had someplace new to start. Natasha was apparently through with him; she gathered her phone and keys (and whatever weapons Bruce wasn’t seeing) and stood to go.

“Bruce--” For the first time during the evening, Natasha was less than perfectly composed. “I only started this conversation because you already knew something was off. If you hadn’t, or if you didn’t seem to care that it was off, I never would have opened my mouth. Whatever you decide... Please think carefully about it.”

She slipped out the door and left Bruce to his thoughts.

* * *

Before Bruce could work through even a tenth of what Natasha had told him and the implications of it all, SHIELD came back with a location of a factory that showed suspiciously high readings of a subatomic particle consistent with the requirements of the weapons Bruce and Tony had pieced together.

Fury came down to the Tower personally to talk with Bruce. “As Agent Barton has pointed out, this guy wants you already, Dr. Banner. It’s probably best if you sit this one out. Intel says that there’s nothing the rest of the team can’t handle.”

It took Bruce a few seconds to realize Fury was there to make sure Bruce’s feelings weren’t hurt by being left behind. Bruce thought he covered his amusement at the thought, because, really, it was only polite not to laugh in the man’s face, but he didn’t think there was much hope of his success. By the time Bruce trusted himself outside of his lab (JARVIS was probably recording him laughing so hard he had to put his head down on a work bench, but Bruce was fairly sure the video wouldn’t go farther than the next team bonding event) the Tower was quiet. JARVIS informed him that the team had left for Switzerland and the mission feeds would be available in real time once the ‘jets arrived.

That was going to take at least another hour, though, so Bruce showered and then made some tea and took it along with the tablet with his bottomless to-be-read pile up to the observation deck so he could watch the skyline while he skimmed the latest journals. At least, that was the plan until he stepped out of the elevator to find Clint on Tony’s landing pad, silhouetted against the hazy summer sky. He didn’t turn around from where he was leaning against the railing, the high-altitude wind whipping his loose t-shirt around him, but Bruce knew he’d be aware of the elevator and Bruce stepping out of it. Bruce took that as a tacit agreement on Clint’s part to pretend not to notice and give Bruce the opportunity to duck back into the elevator and dodge yet another awkward encounter. 

Bruce never hesitated. 

For all that he’d spent the better part of the week since the movie encounter and Natasha’s heretofore unprecedented intercession turning the question of what he should do over and over (and over) in his mind, he still hadn’t reached any kind of a conclusion. He appreciated Natasha’s concern, but in the end, it wasn’t his decision to make, at least not solely, and he thought it was past time he and Clint dealt with it.

“I didn’t realize you were here,” Bruce said, as he stepped out onto the observation deck. 

“I still can’t do jack with these ribs.” Clint shrugged. “My mobility’s pretty much shot to hell until I ditch the knee brace, too. The most I could do is sit up in the ‘jet and watch the feed; Cap figured I could do that from here and give them space for an extra agent on the ground.”

“Seems practical,” Bruce said.

“Yeah,” Clint sighed. 

“You still hate it.”

“Oh, yeah.”

It was the most unguarded conversation they’d had since the extraction team had pulled them out of Switzerland; Bruce was very aware of just how much he’d missed that, so much that there was an almost audible _click_ in his brain. It made it easier to say, “I thought we should talk.”

“Pretty sure we already have.” Clint kept his eyes on the skyline for an extra few seconds before he slanted a glance at Bruce. “You don’t need to baby me through this--I appreciate your taking the time, but it’s not necessary.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said. “But what exactly am I babying you through?” The look Clint gave him at that was furious--and hurting, Bruce realized. He hadn’t been out there for two minutes and he was already fucking this up. “I’m not--” Clint turned away from him, clearly separating himself from Bruce even if he didn’t step away, and Bruce reached out and wrapped his hand around Clint’s arm. “I didn’t--I’m not trying to jerk you around,” Bruce said, willing Clint to hear the emotions under the words. “I honestly don’t know. I missed something somewhere.”

Clint’s arm was rigid under Bruce’s hand and he still wasn’t looking at Bruce, but his voice was even. “You don’t need to baby me through how things just happen. Sex is sex. I get it.”

“Clint--”

“Seriously.” Clint did finally pull away and Bruce made himself let go. “I don’t need you to dance around how we don’t fit. I mean, I figure you’d say it nicely--you’re not a dick--but, man, I really fucking do not need to hear it. I’ll keep out of your way, okay?”

“No,” Bruce said, blurting it out before Clint could disappear on him again. “No, it’s not okay. I said that, I know, I remember, but that’s not how I meant it.” Clint was stiff and still next to Bruce, but he wasn’t gone already, so Bruce took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, centering himself. “I don’t usually find myself in situations like that.” Clint opened his mouth and Bruce hurried to add, “Which I’m saying only to make the point that I--don’t really have a baseline on how to react. To any of it.”

Clint was looking at Bruce, finally, and that was both good and bad. He wasn’t leaving, though, and he wasn’t pushing for more, so Bruce did his best to let go of the _wrongrunhide_ from knowing that someone was watching him. 

“You were hell-bent on it being your fault and all I meant was that it had happened and I didn’t think we needed SHIELD involved while we dealt with it.”

“Great,” Clint said. “Mission accomplished.” Bruce didn’t say anything, but it turned out he didn’t need to, because Clint sighed and added, “Yeah, okay, maybe not completely.”

“No, not completely,” Bruce agreed. “Points for no SHIELD involvement, though.” Clint snorted and a little of the tension between them eased. Before Bruce could follow up, though, there was a quiet ping through the speakers set into the wall. 

“Agent Barton, Dr. Banner,” JARVIS said. “Captain Rogers has asked me to relay that the team is approximately nine minutes from engagement.”

“Good deal, JARVIS,” Clint said. “The war room all ready to go?”

“I have configured the video and audio settings in the primary command center to your preferred configurations. You should have enough time for any minor adjustments prior to initial contact.”

“Thanks, J,” Clint said. Bruce was disappointed; he could own that even as he did his best not to show it. Clint looked at him like he knew what was going on, saying, “Timing is everything, yeah, Doc?”

“It would be if we had any,” Bruce answered. He was smiling, though: that quick ‘Doc’ was good to hear--more than good considering Clint hadn’t actually called him that since everything at the safe house. 

“We can make our own, I guess,” Clint said diffidently. He hesitated, watching Bruce with eyes that were neutral--carefully so, Bruce thought. “After we get done with this clown--it’ll take the better part of a day for everyone to get back here.”

“We can do that.” Bruce met Clint’s eyes steadily and was rewarded with a fleeting smile before they made their way down to the big command center and the video feeds coming in from Europe.

* * *

“How would you like to deal with it?” Bruce said. Clint glanced up swiftly from where he was doing something more complicated than Bruce expected with the eggs he was making for them both. The operation to clean up the manufacturing facility had dragged on for what seemed like forever; after the tension of tracking the action but not being able to be involved, Bruce was happy enough to accept Clint’s invitation to ‘throw something together so we don’t starve’ well before he realized just how well-stocked the kitchen on Clint’s floor actually was. There was even a stash of tea that raised Bruce’s eyebrows. Clint had merely explained it with a quick ‘Nat keeps trying to convert me,’ and plugged in the electric kettle. Bruce cradled his tea in both hands and added, “Leaving the team and SHIELD out of the equation for now.”

Clint was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, “Real world?”

“No,” Bruce answered. “I know the answer to that. We’ve been dancing around it since we got back. What do you _want_?”

“Doc,” Clint sighed. “Come on. What’s that got to do with anything?” He took the skillet with the eggs and peppers and potatoes and cheese off the stove and wiped his hands on the towel he had tucked into the waistband of his jeans. “Whatever I want, it still comes down to you being the guy with I don’t even know how many degrees, the guy _Tony Stark_ likes to work with, and me being the one who has a GED only because Phil Coulson was a righteous, stubborn pain in the ass when he got an idea into his head.”

“Or you’re the guy who’s the greatest marksman in the world--and proves it on a daily basis--and I’m the one who turns into a giant green rage-monster.” Bruce didn’t think he’d ever actually thanked Tony throwing that description out into the team vernacular, but it had made it so describing the other guy wasn’t an exercise in fumbling for words. “I think I win that round.”

Clint didn’t answer, busying himself with plates and forks (and _cloth_ napkins, to Bruce’s bemusement) before he fished around in the refrigerator and produced a small canning jar of what turned out to be salsa so hot Bruce’s eyes were watering before he even got a bite in his mouth. 

“What do you want me to say, Doc?” Clint finally asked. “Because, yeah, I’m attracted to you, your brain and that fucking deadpan sense of humor you like to sneak into conversations with and how much guts it has to take to let the other guy take over and trust that you’ll come back, but I don’t really see what I’ve got for you other than sex. And keeping it to fuckbuddies isn’t--I don’t think that’s gonna work for me this time.”

“That’s good,” Bruce said, smiling. “Because it’s not going to work for me either.”

“Doc--”

“Hear me out, okay?” Bruce waited until Clint nodded once, short and sharp, like he was braced for a body blow. “Three things: you _get_ my sense of humor; you’re sitting here in layers of tape and braces because you decided my well-being was more important than yours; you _trust_ me.” Clint opened his mouth, but Bruce rushed on, the words spilling out of his mouth almost without his conscious control. “Do you know the last time someone who knew me, knew the other guy, knew it all--do you know the last time someone who knew all that _wanted_ me? Because I know it to the day and it’s a depressingly long time--” 

“Bruce,” Clint said, his eyes clear and blue for all that they were layered with regret and understanding and acceptance. Bruce counted out five heartbeats and then threw caution to the winds and leaned across the small kitchen bar, telegraphing every move. Clint breathed in once, and Bruce thought he’d lost him, that he’d draw back or flinch away and Bruce would be left with nothing, but Clint only leaned into Bruce and then they were kissing, careful and deliberate, as though neither of them was quite sure the other wouldn’t bolt. 

“Are we good?” Bruce managed to ask without moving his mouth more than a fraction of an inch away from Clint’s, and took Clint’s low, wordless noise for an agreement. The second kiss was better, and the third better still--Clint’s mouth was hot and greedy against Bruce’s and his hands were tangled in Bruce’s hair. Bruce didn’t know how long he could have stayed there--forever sounded good--except that Clint shifted, and then hissed, and Bruce snapped out of it.

“Wait,” Clint said, and Bruce could admit that he got a little thrill out of how uneven Clint's voice was. “I’m good, just, don’t go--”

“Oh, I am not going anywhere,” Bruce said. “We could probably take this somewhere that won’t stress your ribs, though.” He swallowed hard, and added, “Or we could take things a little more slowly this time?”

“Is that--do you want that?” Clint was back to the professional voice, the one that gave nothing away. 

“If you mean, do I want you to shift those ribs enough to undo what good a week of downtime has done you, then yes, I do want to take it slow. If you mean, do I need time to think about what we’re doing, then, no, I don’t need to slow down. But I’m good if you want--”

“Fuck, _no_ ,” Clint said. He’d made it around to Bruce’s side and stepped up close enough that Bruce could see the pulse beating under his jaw. He shuddered when Bruce got his mouth on it. Bruce was starting to get a handle on his responses; he was incredibly quiet, which made figuring out his tells just that much more rewarding. “That’s not what I want at all.”

“What _do_ you want?” Bruce asked, and was rewarded with an almost soundless whine. He got his hands up under Clint’s shirt and almost whined himself at the feel of skin and muscle against him. “Tell me,” he murmured.

“Want to blow you,” Clint gasped, arching into Bruce’s touch. “Take you deep, make you scream--”

“Bed,” Bruce said, half his brain whiting out at the breathless, shaking words. “Your knee--”

“Yeah,” Clint breathed, backing out into the hall and towing Bruce along. Bruce fumbled with the buttons on Clint’s shirt, getting them undone on the second or third try and pushing the shirt off Clint’s shoulders before working on his own. Skin was good, Bruce thought hazily. In Switzerland, they’d barely taken the time to touch each other, everything wild and adrenaline-fueled, but here, Clint pulled Bruce close as they stumbled into the bedroom and kissed him until Bruce was shaking so hard he could barely stand. “I got you,” Clint whispered. “Come on.”

“Okay,” Bruce managed to say. “Okay.” Clint steered them across the room until Bruce was sitting on the bed, trying to undo his belt and deal with his socks and shoes.

“I got you,” Clint repeated, and Bruce gave up and let Clint take care of the practical stuff. “Like this,” Clint said once Bruce was naked, coaxing him back onto the bed until he was stretched out on his side and Clint was biting kisses across his chest and hips and thighs. The tension coiled low and hot in Bruce, every touch of Clint’s mouth drawing him tighter and tighter so that he couldn’t muffle the cry that ripped out his throat when Clint licked across the head of his cock and sucked hard at the very tip. “Yeah,” Clint said, nearly purring, his breath striking cool where he’d wet Bruce’s skin. “Like that.”

He licked Bruce again, and then swallowed him down and Bruce dug his hands into the mattress to keep from clawing at Clint. 

“Bruce,” Clint said. He sounded the slightest bit uncertain; Bruce made himself pay attention. “You can--I don’t care if you get rough. Pull my hair, hold me down, fuck my throat. I’ll tap out if I need to--” He tapped two fingers quickly against Bruce’s hip, _onetwothree_. “Otherwise, I’m good.”

“Promise you will,” Bruce gasped. “Promise--don’t do anything stupid.” 

“Yeah,” Clint breathed. “Promise.” He dipped his head and took Bruce back into his mouth, sucking only hard enough to tease. Bruce let him play for a while, let himself enjoy the lush, wet heat, but then he took Clint at his word and pushed his cock down Clint’s throat. Clint took Bruce’s first few thrusts easily, his eyes half-closed and his mouth red and shiny, so fucking gorgeous Bruce could have been convinced he was nothing but a dream. 

He was real, though, his throat working desperately to take Bruce deep; his hands scrabbling at Bruce’s hips, dragging him closer every time Bruce started to edge away. Bruce heard himself talking, babbling Clint's name and how good he looked, asking how much more he could take; Clint answered with quick, flickering looks up through his lashes. Bruce saw nothing but want and need, and let himself go, his final thrusts rough and deep, so much so that Clint had to be choking. Clint took it, though, took everything and whined helplessly as Bruce came deep in his throat.

“Fuck,” Clint was gasping as Bruce rolled onto his back and let the aftershocks shudder through him. “Fuck, Bruce--”

Bruce leaned up on one elbow and watched as Clint jacked himself frantically. “Slow down,” Bruce told him. Clint flashed him a dazed, almost uncomprehending look, but obeyed with shaking hands, his strokes easing back in speed and intensity. “Good,” Bruce breathed. “So good.” 

He ran his thumb along the curve of Clint’s lower lip, catching some of his own come and feeding it back to Clint. They both might have groaned at that, but maybe it was just Bruce, because Clint--Clint was so very quiet the rest of the time. Bruce traced the curve of Clint’s jaw, the line of his throat and how it curved into his shoulder. He circled his thumb around Clint’s nipples, teasing them until they were hard and then flicking at them with the edge of his nail. 

“What you said earlier, about not minding if I’m rough,” Bruce said hoarsely. “Does that still apply?”

“Yeah,” Clint whispered, going still under Bruce’s hands. “Please.”

Bruce pinched hard, dug his nails in and twisted Clint's nipples until they were red and swollen and felt hot to his touch. Clint arched into him, wordless and shaking, not asking for anything, only taking what Bruce gave him. Bruce dropped his hand lower and started the same process with Clint’s cock, circling the head with his thumb, pressing the edge of his nail into the slit. 

“Again?” Bruce asked, and this time his voice was strong and sure. Clint swallowed hard, and then nodded. Bruce pressed his nail in deeper, rocking it back and forth, watching as Clint bit down hard on his bottom lip. “No,” Bruce murmured. “I need to hear you say it.” He mostly wanted to be certain they were on the same page, but then Clint shuddered hard at the words, and Bruce heard himself add, “Ask me for it, Clint.”

It took Clint three tries--Bruce teased him a litte more mercilessly each time--but he did finally choke out, “ _Please_ , fuck, do it.” 

Bruce raked his nails across the head of Clint’s cock, pinching the tip hard, harder than he’d planned. Clint sobbed once and pushed into Bruce’s hand; Bruce didn’t make him ask for it again, only repeated his actions and didn’t even try to suppress the pure animal satisfaction that swept over him as Clint fell apart for him.

* * *

Clint didn’t exactly cuddle, but he did do an excellent sprawl in bed. Since said sprawl left more than half of him draped over Bruce, pliant and sated and lazy, Bruce didn’t see where it mattered what he called it. Bruce could tell he was going to lose all feeling in the shoulder that Clint was burrowing into, but until he did, it was very pleasant--if a tiny bit possessive--to comb his fingers through the short hair at the base of Clint’s skull.

“I never noticed this before, but smug is a very good look on you,” Clint said. Bruce could feel him smiling into his shoulder. 

“You’re not even looking at me; how do you know I’m smug?” Bruce was actually very smug, but still. 

“You have smug fingers,” Clint mumbled. “Very I’m-in-charge-here-aren’t-we-all-glad.” He didn’t sound too put-out about it; in fact, he grumbled when Bruce stopped his petting. Bruce took the hint and went back to the slow, easy strokes.

“I’m--content,” Bruce said. “Different from smug.” Clint snorted. 

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Doc.” 

“I don’t,” Bruce said. Clint caught the sudden serious shift in his voice and lifted his head off of Bruce’s shoulder. “We’re here--I don’t need to tell myself a thing. It’s all right here.”

Clint smiled at him, a slow, sweet smile that might have made Bruce a little breathless, but that was okay, too. 

“I can work with that,” Clint said and tucked his head back into Bruce’s shoulder. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick epilogue and we're done (I think!) Thanks for your patience--RL came calling in a big way and it took me a while to get back to the fun stuff.


	4. Epilogue

Tony was forever tweaking the electronics on the quinjets; the one that was serving as the command center during active operations had gotten a new imaging and video system only a few days earlier, so Bruce had a sharp, clear view of everything. He saw the building implode and was up and tearing off his headphones even as Steve was barking, "Hawkeye, _status_ \--"

"Get me close," Bruce said to the pilot. “Far side, where his nest was.” The pilot gave him a thumbs up and Bruce wrenched himself out of the cockpit and back toward the open rear panel of the 'jet. He'd seen a dark blur on the vid screen, one was moving ahead of the debris thrown clear by the blast. He fixed the trajectory in his mind and stamped down hard on the fear that it might not have been Clint, that he hadn't gotten a rappelling arrow off before the explosion. The pilot put the jet into a spiraling turn that let Bruce catch glimpses of the chaos on the ground, but then the jump light turned green and Bruce let himself drop out of the ‘jet.

* * *

It was bright when Bruce came back to himself, nothing but rocks and debris under him and dust still hanging in the air. He laid his head back and took a slow, deep breath, but that same dust was all in his lungs--the Other Guy tended to ignore stuff like that--and wound up in an endless loop of coughing and not being able to clear his lungs.

“Doc!” A hand came down on his shoulder and another one appeared in front of his face, holding an oxygen mask. Bruce grabbed for it and inhaled gratefully. His lungs still threw him another round of coughing, but it was less frantic this time. He breathed in one last time and then passed the mask back to Clint. 

“Thanks,” Bruce managed to say, and then frowned as his eyes and brain finally synced up and he got a good look at Clint. 

“Yeah,” Clint said. “I know: I look like shit.”

He did, too, covered in cuts and scrapes and trails of blood that acted like magnets to the dirt and debris in the air. Still, he was alive and well enough to smirk at Bruce’s inspection, even if it wasn’t particularly up to his usual standards. 

“Occupational hazard,” Clint said, with a laugh that turned into a wheeze. 

“Put the damn mask back on, Barton,” Natasha snapped, carrying a second mask and oxygen tank up to where Clint and Bruce were sitting. She muttered something in Russian that had Clint yelping indignantly even as he followed orders and held the mask back up to his face. Natasha reached over and pulled the elastic over his head, snapping it lightly against the back of his head. Clint looked up and blew her a kiss through the mask, and she rolled her eyes.

“Sorry for the delay,” she said to Bruce as she handed him the second mask and shook out a space blanket to drop around his shoulders. “Medical got a little distracted.” Her voice was perfectly composed, but Bruce knew that look in her eye, the one that said things were even more fucked up than usual. 

“No problem,” Bruce said, accepting the mask. He was mostly okay, but Clint was watching him with a look in _his_ eyes. Apparently, it was a day for Looks. He could hear the whine of Tony’s repulsors and the roar of the quintjet’s engines, but the Other Guy had left, so Bruce assumed everything was in the final, mop-up stage. “What did I miss?”

Clint snorted and Natasha answered with a grim sort of a smile, but she answered lightly. “Well, after the genius here deliberately drew the fire of the extra-special doomsday weapon of the week and got himself blown up--”

“Hey!” Clint started to take the mask off to argue, but then thought better of it when both Bruce and Natasha rounded on him with glares. Bruce could only hope his was half as terrifying as Natasha’s but in any case, Clint subsided and resorted to sign language.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said. “Of course what I mean to say is that once Hawkeye provided a diversion designed to allow Iron Man and Captain America to outflank the heavy artillery, and in the process _got himself blown up_ \--” Clint threw up his hands and flipped Natasha off before sitting back with a distinct air of sulking about him. 

“Well, he did zipline out in front of the explosion,” Bruce said. Clint grinned at Bruce, his hands moving quickly as he signed to Natasha.

“He says that once again, you are his favorite,” she translated. “I’m heart-broken,” she added dryly. Clint signed something else that she didn’t translate, only answered, “In your dreams, Barton,” before turning back to Bruce. “Between Tony and Cap taking out the weapon--Tony says you’re going to love reverse-engineering this one, Doc--and the Other Guy arriving on the scene, things got wrapped up fairly quickly.”

Bruce got the impression she was skimming over the surface of things--and she’d completely left out Thor--but the Medical team arrived at that point, and he was more interested in making sure Clint didn’t gloss over any injuries than finding out details he’d likely hear in debriefings. Aside from the myriad cuts, the worst of which the team said could be closed with glue, and having inhaled a substantial amount of the dust and vaporized building, he seemed to be fine. Bruised and sore and tired, but fine. 

“Yo, Big Man,” Tony said, pushing up his helmet to look Bruce over with a familiar, speculative gleam in his eyes. “Feeling better?”

There was only one reason Tony ever eyed Bruce like that, and it fit with Natasha’s edited story and Clint’s worry about him. “What did he do this time?” Bruce sighed.

“Knocked Thor into the next county,” Tony offered promptly. “Literally--the line is just over on the other side of the hill and the big guy got a really good angle with his uppercut--”

“Stark,” Clint and Natasha said in unison, and Tony grinned. 

“Got it all on video,” Tony said, flipping down his helmet and firing up his repulsors. “Holiday party gag reel.”

Bruce held the oxygen mask up to his face and breathed into it carefully. Clint leaned in and bumped his shoulder into Bruce’s. “Don’t go there,” he said, moving the mask so he could talk quietly to Bruce. “He was pissed at everyone--them for not taking care of me, me for setting it all in motion in the first place.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said, which was utterly useless, but what else was there to say? 

“Nah, it’s cool--I mean, it’s hard to argue with the guy who pulls you out from under a couple of tons of debris right before it’s going to pancake you.” Clint shrugged. “He picked me up and set me down over here and kinda gave me a lecture.”

“Oh, god,” Bruce groaned.

“Yeah, no, it was pretty funny,” Clint said, his smile the one that reached his eyes and usually did good things to Bruce’s moods. “‘Cupid no fly,’ he kept saying. ‘Cupid NO FLY.’ And then Thor came over and was in one of his hale-fellow-well-met-it-was-a-good-and-glorious-battle moods and the next thing we know, Thor’s the one flying and the big guy is yelling at Steve to pay better attention next time.” 

Clint stopped to breathe through the mask, but he wouldn’t let Bruce isolate himself, which was either one of the best things about having let him into Bruce’s life, or one of the worst. Bruce couldn’t decide and was too tired to care. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I don’t mean to imply you don’t know what you’re doing--”

“Oh, it was a stupid move,” Clint said. His voice was getting more hoarse and rough with every word. “And I told them it was probably going to happen, but Steve and Tony thought they could get to the firing line before things got hot. They didn’t--too much other shit came up--and we were scrambling. The Other Guy wasn’t wrong, and we wouldn’t have made it through the rest of it without him, so, y’know. We’re good.”

Bruce sat and breathed for a little while longer--and made sure Clint put the oxygen mask back on, too--but when the ‘jet put down next to them, he let Natasha shepherd him and Clint into the back and got himself belted in. Clint was moving slowly and he kept the oxygen with him, but Medical said he was fine to go home, so Bruce tried not to hover. They were set for debriefing the next afternoon, which meant a direct trip back to the Tower, no stops at the ‘carrier or other interruptions. That was never a bad thing, but today Bruce knew he wasn’t the only one happy about it.

Tony was yammering on about food, ordering take-out or whatever, but Bruce just shook his head and steered Clint to the elevator. He wasn’t sure whether he had them going to ground because Clint needed some downtime or if he himself needed some quiet to process the Other Guy doing more than just reacting to a situation, but he didn’t think it really mattered. 

They ended up on Clint’s floor, mostly because it was only a flight down from the landing pad and thus, technically, closer. Either floor would have been fine, really. After a couple of months of hesitantly shifting back and forth between their floors, each one of them making sure not to leave clothing or personal items in the other’s rooms, sharing space had stopped seeming like a huge deal and ended up being something that worked pretty well for them. They each retreated to their own floor when the other was away on a mission or at a conference, and Bruce assumed they’d do the same if they needed time apart after a disagreement, but so far, that hadn’t happened. 

“Shower,” Clint croaked as they stepped off the elevator. That was standard. Bruce had seen Clint staggering into the showers in much worse shape than he appeared now. He’d asked Clint about it once, when he’d nearly passed out in the shower after a long, bad mission and had gotten the answer that no matter how bad it was, it’d be worse to go back out and start the next one already disgusting. The been-there-done-that in Clint’s tone hadn’t done much to endear SHIELD and how they treated their agents to Bruce. Clint figured that out--because, like Natasha had told Bruce, he really was good at reading the emotional climate of a room--and had thrown in a snarky ‘Besides, it’s Stark’s water bill, let’s run it up,’ in what Bruce assumed was an attempt to defuse the negative feelings. It hadn’t really, but Bruce pretended like it did. 

Clint detoured through the kitchen and came back with a fistful of protein bars that he shoved at Bruce. Bruce chewed through three methodically--there was no pleasure involved, but not eating would mean he’d wake up starving long before he’d get enough rest. Clint ate one with a matching lack of enthusiasm. The shower, though... 

The shower made up for a lot.

Clint was peeling off his layers of body armour and Kevlar more slowly than usual, but he waved off Bruce’s offer of help. “I’m good, Doc. Just trying not to screw anything else up by accident.”

Bruce took him at his word and got the shower started, hotter than usual--and neither one of them was shy about half-scalding themselves after long days--hot enough that the steam came billowing out in seconds. Bruce made sure Clint could manage the laces on his boots and then stripped out of what remained of his own clothes and stumbled under the spray. 

He lost a little time to the water beating down on him, but shook himself back to alertness when Clint joined him, hissing as the water stung the cuts and scrapes on his arms and neck and face. Bruce knew Medical had cleaned out anywhere the skin had been broken, but he reached for the tea tree oil soap just the same. 

“Doc,” Clint half-whined in protest--which, yes, it was going to burn like crazy but that was the point, and for all he grumbled, Clint propped himself against the wall and let Bruce make sure he was okay. He was, of course--the paramedics that flew with SHIELD mission teams knew what they were doing and wouldn’t have let him go if anything was wrong, but Bruce liked knowing first-hand. He thought Clint liked him knowing, too. 

Unsurprisingly, some days the post-mission shower turned into post-mission shower sex--and some days they didn’t even make it into the shower before they were rutting against each other--but often enough, it was more about just being in the same space, about trusting and being trusted and whatever else was tempted to come crawling out from under all the baggage both of them were dragging along behind them. Bruce thought this was probably going to end up as one of the low-key days, but then Clint got his hands slicked with shampoo and into Bruce’s hair and the energy shifted subtly. 

It was still low-key, but there was a definite build to it now, Clint’s hands sliding down Bruce’s back and then back up to rinse the soap clear, Bruce trailing his own hands over Clint’s arms and shoulders. Clint moved in close, one strong thigh pressed between Bruce’s; Bruce tugged him closer and kissed him. 

“Yeah,” Clint breathed, a long, quiet sigh of a word that made Bruce _want_. Clint opened his mouth against Bruce’s and let Bruce press kiss after kiss on him. Bit by bit, the remnants of the day eased away, until it was just the two of them under the rainfall shower, and when that wasn’t enough, it was simple enough to find their way to Clint’s big bed. 

“Let me,” Bruce said, and Clint nodded and laid back on the pillows so that Bruce could put his hands and mouth anywhere he wanted. Bruce knew all the right places--the curve of Clint’s collarbone, the dip of his hip--but that didn’t mean it wasn’t pure pleasure to watch the flush spread down Clint’s chest and belly, hear the stutter-stop-stutter of his breath, taste salt-dampened skin. The last time they’d been together, Bruce flat on his back, Clint riding him with a single-minded intent, fucking himself on Bruce’s cock until they were both gasping and spent, Clint had taken what he’d wanted; this time, he let Bruce tell him what he was going to get. 

They’d fucked each other against walls and on floors as often as beds; this day, Bruce took Clint carefully, licking him open, tongue-fucking him until he was more sobbing than breathing before reaching for the condoms and lube and opening him the rest of the way with his cock. Clint reached back and pulled Bruce closer, so that Bruce was wrapped around him and buried in him and they both could make sure the other was okay, had made it through another day that had tried to kill them. 

“No rush,” Bruce murmured, mouthing along the curve of Clint’s ear, breathing him in. He stayed still inside Clint, let the tight heat of Clint’s body surround him. Clint didn’t object or argue, only allowed Bruce to move them gradually toward orgasm, each small movement building on the previous, every touch coiling them that much tighter. Bruce drew it out as long as he could, longer than he’d thought possible, and when he finally took Clint’s hand and wrapped it around his cock, it took only a single stroke before Clint came hard, still silent but shaking and spilling over both their hands. Bruce stayed still a few heartbeats longer, but Clint was whispering to him, his voice barely there but still filling all of Bruce, _babecomeoncomeonletitgoletmefeelyou_ , and Bruce couldn’t deny him for a second longer.

* * *

Clint liked being up high and seeing everything; he had the most lived-in terrace of all of them. Bruce usually wasn’t quite so enthusiastic, but there was a quiet, sheltered corner that got the late-morning sun and ended up working well as a place to meditate. Bruce found himself out there often enough that there was a spare yoga mat tucked up under the overhang and Clint knew to look for Bruce there if they’d spent the night on Clint’s floor. It was one more tick in the Together column even if neither one of them ever mentioned it.

Clint had showered and was dressed in his usual black fatigues by the time Bruce came in. He was pacing around the apartment, arguing with Tony on video conference, but he pushed a mug of Bruce’s favorite tea toward him. Bruce ignored the argument--he knew the tone and it was one that said both men were actually having a good time and didn’t need anybody to distract them--and drank his tea. JARVIS interrupted the increasingly ridiculous posturing that was going on with the information that the SHIELD debrief team was inbound and due to land in three minutes. Without pausing the argument, Clint pushed his feet into his boots and held the elevator while Bruce rinsed out his mug and ran his hands through his hair.

“Later, Stark; I’ve got stuff I gotta do before we go tear apart yesterday’s clusterfuck and only three minutes to do it,” Clint finally said, killing the video and audio and turning to Bruce. “Hi, Doc.” 

“Morning,” Bruce managed to say before Clint’s mouth covered his. The elevator was dropping but Bruce didn’t think that had much to do with the sudden giddy rush that hit him. 

“Hold that thought. We’re coming back to it,” Clint said as the doors opened on the conference room level and they were met with a full complement from SHIELD, with the extra-special bonus of Director Fury joining in on the video screen.

“I’m counting on that,” Bruce said, not bothering to keep his voice down. Clint grinned at him and held the door open for him and the Avenger portion of the day got underway.

**Author's Note:**

> Fills for the _pretending to be a couple_ and the _protect_ squares on my [](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**cottoncandy_bingo**](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) [card](http://topaz119.dreamwidth.org/17830.html).
> 
> I'd also like to thank all the people who post and re-blog such excellent Renner and Ruffalo photo/.gif sets and artwork on tumblr. A selection of the ones that kept me going for this story are [here](http://topaz119.tumblr.com/tagged/tpata) because sharing is caring, right?


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